Ruby the Rubik's cube robot sets up battle of the students

David Swan
Thursday, 02 June 2011 10:56

IT Industry - Development

 

A battle between universities has erupted, with a robot from Swinburne University failing to beat the world record Rubik's cube time set by RMIT students.

The robot, appropriately named Ruby, was developed by students at Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology and can solve the Rubik's cube in just over 10 seconds, a new world record for the fastest robot to solve a Rubik's cube.

The record doesn't compare however to the world record fastest Rubik's cube solve (by a person or robot), achieved by Feliks Zemdegs, a student from RMIT University.

The battle is set to become a Terminator-esque duel between man and machine, with Ruby smashing the previous robot record which was 1 min 4 sec, and set in Ireland.

Video of Feliks setting the world record can be viewed here, while Ruby's world record can be viewed here.

Six Swinburne students built the robot from scratch, as part of their double degree in Bachelor of Engineering (Robotics and Mechatronics)/Bachelor of Science (Computer Science and Software Engineering).

The team was made up of identical twin computer whiz kids David and Richard Bain, Daniel Purvis, Jarrod Boyes, Miriam Parkinson and Jonathan Goldwasser.

"Ruby works by scanning each face of a scrambled cube through a web cam. It then uses a software algorithm to develop a solution which is fed to the high-speed robot through a real-time embedded control system," said Professor Chris Pilgrim, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies.

"The students' combined expertise in robotics and software engineering enabled them to construct a robot with a fast computer vision-tracking system capable of very high precision movements and timings."

The Rubik's cube itself was nvented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik, and waws originally called the "Magic Cube".

Time will tell whether Swinburne's Ruby will catch up to RMIT's Felix, but the battle of man vs. machine doesn't look like ending any time soon.